Sometimes you hear about a particular
thing you don’t care about with such frequency that you wonder if you
are supposed to start caring about it or if those who shape our society
are just hellbent on distracting you from important things that are
occurring in the world we live in.

Many of Ohio’s major newspapers, including The Cincinnati Enquirer,
lost thousands of readers in the past year, but some managed to beat
trends and gain in certain categories, according to a circulation audit
from the Alliance for Audited Media.

Local News Stations Restructure After Broadcasts Mistaken for Parodies of News Coverage: There are things you can almost guarantee
will be on the local TV news if for some reason you find yourself stuck
watching it. They
are: things on fire, poor people committing crimes and things about
people in the community doing something nice :)

Kentucky office reportedly closed, moved to Cincinnati

The Cincinnati Enquirer and its parent company
Gannett went through another string of layoffs today, including the
reported closing of the newspaper’s Kentucky office.[CityBeat followed up on this story on Aug. 2 here.]Jim Romenesko reported on his journalism industry blog that there were layoffs at The Kentucky Enquirer, the Kentucky edition of the local newspaper. One commenter on Gannett Blog echoed the report, saying the Kentucky offices had been closed down and moved to Cincinnati.
Gannett Blog reports 11 layoffs at Cincinnati branches, including the Community Press and Community Recorder. That coincides with more than 150 layoffs at newspapers around the country, according to the blog.Because of Gannett’s secrecy with staffing issues, it’s difficult to confirm any specific report. No names have been provided yet.
CityBeat was tipped off about the layoffs earlier in the day by a source close to The Enquirer.
A spokesperson wasn’t available for questions about the layoffs, but Jeremy Gaines, vice president of communications at Gannett, told Romenesko, “Some USCP (U.S. Community
Publishing) sites are making cuts to align their business plans with
local market conditions.”
Gannett CEO Gracia Martore proudly claimed on July 22, “We are accelerating our transformation into the ‘New Gannett’ every day.”

Typically, invoking a Great Man to settle
an argument involves Lincoln, Twain, Stalin, Churchill, Chief Seattle,
etc. Hitler is a provocative new favorite. Among some gun control foes, quoting
Hitler proves what will happen if Obama has his way: gun registration,
confiscation and tyranny.

WEDNESDAY DEC. 19: Like tattoos and blood pacts with the
devil, getting a pet is a decision that can have long-term effects. A
guest column in today’s Enquirer explains how pets aren’t the same as other
gifts people don’t like, because they cost a lot of money after you buy
them and will pee all over everything.

FRIDAY DEC. 14: The Enquirer recently published a
six-part series on Barbara Joly, better known as the “Granny Robber.”
Joly is currently doing prison time for robbing banks back in 2008 to
support her adult son.

I’m grateful to the GQ magazine reporter who asked Florida Sen. Marco Rubio about the age of the earth. It raises a vital question for a country
where significant numbers of Americans reject much of science from
creation to evolution.

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

• It
was a double scoop when HUC Prof. Ben Zion Wacholder and doctoral
student Martin G. Abegg Jr. released their bootleg translations of
previously unpublished Dead Sea scrolls.
Their
highly accurate texts were created without seeing the scrolls and they
shattered secrecy created by a cabal of scholars who for decades
restricted other researchers’ and translators’ access to the ancient
documents.
Steve
Rosen’s recent Page 1 story in the Enquirer got that right. The other
scoop was my 1991 Enquirer story reporting Wacholder and Abegg’s
triumph. Our photo showed visually impaired Wacholder looking at a
dramatically enlarged image on a Mac.
Their
ordeal had its origin in a promise by then-HUC president Nelson Glueck
in 1969. He agreed to house 1000-plus photographic images of the scrolls
lest something happen to the originals. He also agreed with scholars
controlling access to the scrolls that no one else would see the HUC
negatives while the original scrolls existed.
That
included Wacholder. To his frustration, HUC honored that promise even
after Glueck’s death and despite the growing international controversy
over restricted scholarly access to many of the original scrolls.
Today’s Biblical Archaeology Society website, biblicalarchaeology.org,
recalled how Wacholder and Abegg got lucky in 1989. Chief editor of the
scrolls John Strugnell sent a copy of a secret concordance of the Dead
Sea Scrolls to Wacholder. It “consisted of photocopies of index cards
on which every word in the unpublished scrolls was listed, including its
location and the few words surrounding it.” It was their Rosetta
Stone.
Wacholder
and Abegg programmed the Mac to apply their knowledge of ancient
literature to the data in the concordance. "I'm sick and tired of all
this waiting," he told me at the time.
In
1991, the society’s Biblical Archaeology Review published the
reconstructions, breaking the more-than-40-year-old monopoly on the
scrolls.
And
when jealous scholars challenged the accuracy of the reconstructions,
Wacholder was dismissive. "I'll match my knowing of the . . . texts -
even blind — any of them.
Wacholder
died last year. Abegg became professor and co-director of the Dead Sea
Scrolls Institute at Trinity Western University in British Columbia.
• I’ve
described my fear that the Cleveland Plain Dealer — long Ohio’s best
daily — will follow other Advance Publications into print obscurity. PD
journalists also heard the clatter of bean counters and created the
Save The Plain Dealer campaign. Earlier this year, Advance — another
name for Newhouse family publications — the New Orleans
Times-Picayune as a traditional daily. It fired lots of journalists and
now is printed three days a week to accommodate heavy advertising.
Surviving journalists also work online every day. With that innovation,
Newhouse made New Orleans America’s largest city without a daily paper.
Smaller Advance dailies suffered the same fate. Poynter.com quoted an email from PD science writer John Mangels earlier this month:
“The
multi­media campaign will begin Sunday with a half­-page ad in The Plain
Dealer, to be followed by bus and billboard ads throughout the city. TV
and radio ads will appear soon. There will be mass mailings and e­
mailings to elected officials, political and business leaders and other
people of influence. We’ll have a Facebook page with an abundance of
content, a petition on Change.org,
and a Twitter feed. We’re also working to organize community forums
where we’ll discuss the future of journalism in Northeast Ohio, and the
potential impact of the loss of the daily paper and much of its
experienced news­gathering staff.”
Later,
reached by phone, Mangels told Poynter that PD management hasn’t said
anything about Advance’s plans. “The only detail that we’ve been told by
our bosses here is that major changes are coming, layoffs in some
number are coming,” Mangels said.
• Have
you noticed how GOP aspirants for the 2016 presidential nomination are
using long-reviled mainstream news media (MSM) to distance themselves
from Romney and his disdain for retirees, veterans, Hispanics, African
Americans, and young adults? I love the GOP’s irony deficit. They’ve
spent decades teaching True Believers that the MSM is an evil, liberal
cabal, not to be trusted. Now, these same Republican 40-somethings want
voters to believe what the mainstream news media tell them about their
aspirations and sagacity. They’re also fleeing Romney’s transparent
hypocrisy and its blowback; benefits to Democratic constituencies are
meant to buy votes but benefits for GOP constituencies never, ever
should be understood as a way to woo financial support or votes.
• Here’s
an angle I haven’t encountered in post-election coverage: an almost
inevitable GOP win in 2016. Not only is a second elected term unusual
for modern Democratic presidents, but a third term for either party is
rare. Since FDR in 1940, only popular Republican Ronald Reagan was
succeeded by a Republican, George H. W. Bush. I’m not alone if my
reading to liberal columnists is a fair indicator of grudging agreement.
They want Obama to push through agendas they’ve advocated for the past
four years and to find the cajones to fight for his nominations when
they go before the Senate led by Kentucky Pride Mitch McConnell.
• Propaganda-laden
cable news and TV/radio talk shows can lull angry, fearful partisans
and voters into believing what facts refute. And I mean refute not
rebut. Anything out of sync with those GOP media was rejected as MSM
bias. Whether it was a Pavlovian response, delusional thinking or
magical realism, the result was Republican candidates, consultants,
strategists, voters and Fox News were stunned when state after state
went for Obama. Carl Rove went into a spin of denial on Fox News as
election returns came in; he believed what Fox News had been telling him
for months: Romney in a walk. What was that cliche, something about
drinking the Kool-aid?
• This
from Eric Alterman in his What Liberal Media? column in The Nation:
“They watched Fox News, read The Wall Street Journal, clicked on Drudge
and the Daily Caller, and listened to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Hugh
Hewitt, Karl Rove, Dick Morris and Peggy Noonan promise them that their
Kenyan/Muslim/socialist/terrorist nightmare was nearly over. One
election was all that stood between them and a country without capital
gains taxes, pollution regulation, healthcare mandates, gay marriage and
abortions for rape victims.”
Alterman
continued: “The less wonderful irony involves the supporting role the
mainstream media played in this un-reality show. Post-truth politics
reached a new pinnacle this year as major MSM machers admitted to
a lack of concern with the veracity of the news their institutions
reported. ‘It’s not our job to litigate [the facts] in the paper,’ New
York Times national editor Sam Sifton told the paper’s public editor,
Margaret Sullivan, regarding phony Republican ‘voter fraud’ allegations.
‘We need to state what each side says.’ ‘The truth? C’mon, this is a
political convention’ was the headline over a column by Glenn Kessler,
the Washington Post ‘fact-checker.’ Yes, you read that right.”
How
bad was it? Alterman quoted Steve Benen, a blogger and Rachel Maddow
Show producer. He “counted fully 917 false statements made by Mitt
Romney during 2012. Just about the truest words to come out of the
campaign were those of the Romney pollster who explained, ‘We’re not
going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.’ But not only
did many members of the MSM give Romney a pass on his serial lying; they
actually endorsed his candidacy on the assumption that we need not take
seriously any of those statements the candidate had felt compelled to
make in order to win the nomination of his party.”
• In
the expanding universe of online calumny, few American public officials
or public figures strike back big time in part because of broad First
Amendment protections available to defamers. British libel law makes
it much easier for the victim to win. The latest target of false online
vilification is Lord Alistair McAlpine. BBC implicated but didn’t name
him in its spreading child abuse scandal. However, so little was left to
the imagination that in Britain’s media/politics hothouse that McAlpine
was named in myriad tweets.
BBC
quickly admitted error and paid him almost $300,000 to salve his bruised
feelings. ITV — Britain’s Independent Television — followed BBC with
apology and more than $200,000 for inadvertently accusing McAlpine of
abusing children.
McAlpine
is offering to accept a tweeted apology and modest payment from most of
the tweeters. He’s less forgiving of 20 members of Parliament,
journalists and other public officials and figures. They probably face
costly libel actions in a country where it’s almost impossible for a
defendant to win.
• Assume
every microphone in front of you is “on.” You don’t warm up with
“There once was a man from Nantucket . . . “ on the assumption that mic
is dead. Myriad public figures have ignored that Law of the Jungle to
their pain. The latest is Jonathan Sacks, Orthodox chief rabbi of Great
Britain, who delivers a “Thought for the Day” regularly on BBC radio’s
Today program.
Here’s
the Telegraph report and another statement from the overworked BBC
apology machine. After Sacks finished and apparently assumed his mic
was turned off, host Evan Davis asked, “Jonathan, before you go, you
know, any thoughts on what’s going on over in Israel and Gaza at the
moment?”
Lord Sacks sighed, before replying: “I think it has got to do with Iran, actually.”
Cohost
Sarah Montague realized Sacks did not seem to know his remarks were
being broadcast and she could be heard to whisper: “We, we’re live.”
Lord
Sacks adopted a more formal broadcasting manner and suggested the
crisis demanded “a continued prayer for peace, not only in Gaza but for
the whole region. No-one gains from violence. Not the Palestinians, not
the Israelis. This is an issue here where we must all pray for peace and
work for it.”
Later,
BBC apologized for catching Sacks off-guard. A spokesman said: “The
Chief Rabbi hadn’t realized he was still on-air and as soon as this
became apparent, we interjected. (Host) Evan likes to be spontaneous
with guests but he accepts that in this case it was inappropriate and he
has apologized to Lord Sacks. The BBC would reiterate that apology.”
• So
far, I haven’t found a news angle beyond prurience in the Petraeus
resignation. Yes, there could have been a national security issue, but
once then-spymaster Petraeus went public about his extramarital affair,
he couldn’t be blackmailed. We’ll never know how well the CIA would
have run under Petraeus, but turning it further into an almost
unaccountable paramilitary force with its fleet of deadly drones killing
Americans abroad and others would not have been in the national
interest. We need a good spy agency. Killing people you’re trying to
subvert and convert is a lousy game plan.
• Admiring
and available women are no stranger to powerful public and corporate
leaders. Generals are no exception. Neither are social climbers hoping
to use them. All that’s missing from the Petraeus soap opera is for
some just-married junior officer to claim his general exercised droit du
seigneur.
• We
can wonder what their frequently mentioned Lebanese origins have to do
with the Tampa twins’ roles in the Petraeus soap opera, or whether
Paula’s arms are fitter and better displayed than Michele’s. After that,
let’s get to the fun stuff: the ease with which law enforcement obtains
our emails.
• And
a belated Thanksgiving note. Somehow, I found a turkey on the
Copperbelt in Central Africa where I was editing the new daily Zambia
Times. I did my best to explain how to roast it with stuffing to the
cook in the house I was caring for. He served it that evening with
obvious pride. It was brown, roasted over open coal on a spit he’d
tended for hours. The stuffing was special beyond my dreams: the
sonofabitch had used the kosher salami I’d hoarded for months for
stuffing. I thanked and praised him through clenched teeth and dug in.
It was memorable. And awful.